


Against the Darkness

by Rowana77



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 14:06:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowana77/pseuds/Rowana77
Summary: Post-"Infinity War," a wounded and desperate Tony Stark makes his way back to New York with help from Nebula...and only one thought on his mind: is Pepper still alive?





	Against the Darkness

Tony Stark stood on the tarmac of the helicopter pad atop the Stark Tower condominium skyscraper, catching his breath for a second. He was winded and exhausted, and he resolutely pushed away the grey fog and zigzag lines that threatened, every few moments, to obscure his vision.

He gritted his teeth. There was only one thought on his mind now.

_Pepper._

Beside him, clad in a dark navy hoodie similar to his – with the hood pulled low enough to disguise her cobalt-blue visage – stood Nebula. It had been a 20-minute journey to Manhattan in the Class 5 stealth jet from the upstate Avengers Compound, but it had seemed to Tony like an eternity. 

Far below, he’d seen as they’d glided on stealth mode to land on top of the building, a few vehicles – mostly police and fire, some military – patrolled up and down Fifth Avenue. But other than that there were no cars on New York’s streets, no pedestrians on its sidewalks in the middle of a weekday afternoon. A weak sun, partially hidden by dark clouds, added an extra aura of gloom.

He gathered his strength and what shreds were left of his sanity, and limped toward the elevator doors. 

***

Tony had no way of knowing how long it had taken them to get back to Earth on the aged space vehicle named, incongruously, _Benatar_. His watch had been shattered during his hand-to-hand combat with Thanos, as had most of his armor and its operating system. And he’d spent most of the space journey drifting in and out of consciousness as Nebula piloted the craft. Earth days? A week? A month?

When the _Benatar_ finally had breached Earth’s atmosphere, Nebula had roused him from his shock- and wound-fueled stupor, as he had asked her to.

And then he had used every communications device on board – even inventing a few in his increasing desperation – to try to reach Pepper.

Every try had failed.

The only thing he’d been able to glean from the disjointed news reports they picked up, as the _Benatar_ neared Earth, was that the United States – and almost every other nation in the world – was now under martial law. Which, he knew, was only to be expected, since half the world’s population had undoubtedly crumbled to dust at the moment Thanos snapped his fingers. What country wouldn’t suspect it was under attack, and take the necessary precautions?

_Failed._

_The Avengers had failed._

_HE had failed, yet again. Another in a long line of Tony Stark fails that resulted in nothing but endless disaster. He could have done more…_

_And now half the life in the entire Universe was gone._

Peter Parker was gone – the youngster Tony had grown to love almost as a father would love his own son. Dissolved to dust. Tony couldn’t cope with the thoughts, with the memory of that terrible, unspeakable dust. He knew he had packed the blazing immensity of that grief away in some locked compartment of his mind, if only to keep going. The sheer inconceivable horror of it. He only felt numbness. 

He could have blamed Strange. _Why did he save ME?? Why did he hand over the Time Stone and give Thanos the power to end half of all sentient life, everywhere? To end…Peter??_

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t even deal with the questions. 

And even while the dust of what had been the very-much-alive, curious, irrepressible kid was still _on his hands, on his clothes, everywhere_ – leaving him in shock and spiraling on the edge of madness – Tony had suddenly snapped back to another shock, another horrifying thought.

_Pepper._

Was she alive, back on Earth?! Was she dead and gone, one of the unlucky half – another random victim of Thanos’s whim?

The searing intensity of those unanswerable questions, the unrelenting worry… _PEPPER_...drove Tony back up onto his feet again – even while Nebula had to help him walk, limping, one foot dragging, to the _Benatar_. Even while, onboard and with the ship on autopilot, she tended the through-and-through sword wound that his compromised, broken nanotech had imperfectly attempted to heal.

It was another thing he didn’t want to…couldn’t…think too much about. Or he’d stop and let the darkness win and he would die -- and he couldn’t do that. Even as his body screamed quietly at him to _stop, give up, give in_ to the gathering fog. 

Not while he had to get to Pepper.

He’d barely heard it when Nebula informed him that he’d lost a lot of blood. 

“Can we communicate with Earth?” he’d demanded hoarsely, not even bothering to mask the desperation in his voice. “ _When_ can we communicate?” 

She’d shaken her head. As he’d suspected, there was no way to reach Earth channels until they were close to the planet, and even then, with the planet’s strong magnetic field, the aging comm equipment on this godforsaken old craft would probably need to be within the atmosphere.

And so the continuous horror story that was his life had gone on. 

For how long he couldn’t tell. 

He’d fallen into a feverish semi-comatose state as the _Benatar_ raced onward, waking now and then to Nebula pressing a cool cloth to his battered face or making him drink some kind of tasteless nutritional concoction, or rousing himself at intervals to vaguely note her silent efficiency in piloting the craft.

She’d removed the remnants of his armor, bathed him maybe, dressed him in some old clothes – a shirt, some baggy pants, something that had been around the ship; maybe that had once belonged to that Star-Lord asshole. _Who was now dust, too._ He didn’t want to think about that either.

He didn’t know this woman, this blue alien creature, but whatever damnable forces ruled the universe had thrown them together for now. And he couldn’t recall if he’d told her about Pepper in his fevers, or otherwise voiced his worries about the small planet called Earth, but she seemed somehow to understand – and he knew she must have gleaned from him the navigational coordinates for Earth, or…god, who knew? He couldn’t remember. His mind was a maze that was being assailed by the growing grey fog.

He hung on to sanity, to life. Because he had to.

He had to find Pepper.

He wondered about the other Avengers, too – who had lived? Who had died?

What about _Rhodey_? That thought made him hover again on the burning edge of madness.

Was Steve still out there somewhere, leading what was left of them? What of Bruce, and Thor? What about Happy? 

He resolutely pushed away the thought of Peter’s guardian, May – _how could he tell her what had happened?_

It was too much, far too much. Tony’s brain, the same brain that had built a technological empire and had created many of the world’s most complex machines, was now sputtering in fits and starts and he couldn’t control it. _What an odd feeling,_ one part of him registered. He almost laughed like a madman as he hovered on the edge of the black, endless abyss, but that would have seemed crazy. Like someone gibbering at a funeral. But then, who was there to see?

Only Nebula.

He soldiered on.

**

With stealth shields and anti-radar up, they’d entered Earth’s atmosphere over the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, and as soon as they broke through the stratosphere Tony had attempted everything he knew to reach Pepper. 

But all was silence, silence. 

At last, they crossed the Eastern Seaboard and slowed down over the rolling hills of upstate New York in preparation for landing at the Avengers Compound. They’d rolled the ship into a hangar and warily entered the main building of the Compound, expecting at any moment to have armed militia run in and arrest them. 

But the Compound was deserted and desolate. Its AI features were powered down, but its facial-recognition tech granted Tony immediate access, and he limped as quickly as he could through the echoing halls to his office suite, Nebula trailing behind and gazing at everything with a kind of Olympian dispassion. 

He didn’t fire up FRIDAY; not yet. Not until they were sure the complex was truly deserted and they were the only ones there. 

In the familiar confines of his office, he dived for the phone, pausing only to run a quick yet thorough scan for bugs – and called Pepper’s number yet again.

It went to her voicemail this time, and he felt his eyes sting as he heard her voice, heard her say brightly, “Hi, you’ve reached Pepper Potts. Please leave a message for me and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

He felt himself shaking, tried to control it; could not.

“Pepper, it’s me. Honey, are you there? Please pick up. I’m back, I’m OK – are you…are you…” His voice grated to a halt and he felt the room spin; he sat down quickly. 

“Are you there? Sweetheart; Pepper. Please answer.”

 _Nothing, nothing, nothing_ …nothing but his heart beating in his ears like thunder.

“Honey, please call me as soon as you get this, OK? Please tell me where you are and that you’re….all right…” He knew his voice was trembling and he didn’t care. 

He closed his eyes for a moment, waiting, waiting…and then hung up, at last, feeling unmoored, like he was floating in some cloudy ocean.

Nebula was gazing at him, eyes glittering, in a shadowed corner of the office. 

He realized he was crying. This was a nightmare he was locked in the middle of, and he would never escape.

Nebula spoke, her voice harsh but not unkind. “You need to rest, Tony Stark.”

He pulled himself out of the ocean. Steadied his breathing. “I…can’t. I have to go into the city, try to find her.”

“You care for her very much.”

“Yes.” He stood up too quickly and felt the room swirl and become unreal. He leaned over and hung on to his desk, hung on to reality – looking down until the zigzag lines and the mist cleared from his head.

She regarded him from her corner. “Love,” she murmured softly – and was that a bit of wonder in the flat voice? “She could be gone.”

His head snapped up and he glared at her. “She’s alive. She has to be.”

Nebula smiled, and it looked in the dimness like a very sad smile. 

“Then I hope so for your sake, Tony Stark. She could be gone elsewhere, though. If your Earth is under military rule now, as your broadcasts have stated, she could be in a shelter, or she could have left the city. If this is your communication technology” – she waved her hand to indicate his state-of-the-art cell phone – “then perhaps it is also under military control now. Perhaps no one is answering any communication for a while.”

She was just trying to make him feel better, he knew, giving him false hope. But he was suddenly very grateful she was there. She’d helped him stay alive, helped him get here; and she, the daughter of Thanos, on her own revenge mission, certainly, wasn’t bound to do any of that. She’d gone millions of miles out of her way to get him here to Earth. In the back of his mind, he wondered _why_ , but he wouldn’t ask her, not yet. 

“Listen. Thank you,” he said, very seriously. “I am very much in your debt for…getting me here. I can’t ask you to do more.”

“There is much more to do.”

Tony sighed. “I need to go find Pepper,” he repeated, trying to drive his weary body into action.

“I will come with you.”

“You can’t. You don’t…look like you’re from Earth. And with…all that’s happened, everyone’s paranoid now. Especially about aliens. You’ll get arrested the moment they lay eyes on you.”

She returned his hardened gaze. “And what about you?” she shot back. “From what I studied about you in our information banks, you are one of the most famous faces on your Earth. And you left with the space ship that brought you to Titan, and that’s the last anyone saw of you – until half of them died. Do you think they won’t have questions for you, too, Tony Stark?”

She had him there.

He sighed again. “Fine. OK, you’re right. We need to become inconspicuous.” He looked at her. “And just ‘Tony’ is fine. But let’s ditch the use of names till…later.” 

He let go of the desk and limped across the room to the coat closet. After some rummaging, he came up with two navy-blue hoodie sweatshirts and two pairs of jeans, comfortable clothing he kept here for long weekends working in the office in the nearly deserted Compound.

“Tony,” she said softly. He turned.

She glided quietly up behind him and turned him back around, touching his back, where the sword had exited.

He felt wetness there as her hand pressed. 

_Damn it._

“You’re still bleeding a little. This is not good.”

He drew back from her. “I’m OK. I’m fine. We have to go.” He held up the dark hoodie and tried to make a grim joke. “This’ll disguise any blood, right?”

“You need to…”

“I NEED to find Pepper. We need to go now.”

**

The Avengers Class 5 stealth jet-glider – equipped with FRIDAY and four of his best armors – was their ride to New York City. He and Nebula boarded the elegant little craft, and he booted up FRIDAY. 

The AI’s dulcet, Irish-tinged voice was another comfort to his heart and mind.

“Boss. I missed you. Glad to see you back!”

“FRIDAY, same. Navigate to my condo tower at 721 Fifth Avenue, please, to land on the top helicopter port. Complete stealth mode. Avoid all radar and any other detection tech. Comms on secure private channels only.”

FRIDAY hummed and lights on the console flashed. 

Tony knew what was coming next.

“Ah, boss. I’m getting medical alerts up the wazoo. You’re, erm, not in good shape, to say the least. I recommend that you not fly right now – I detect a very bad wound, there, and your nanotech surgery is pretty much a fail, sorry to say. You’re still experiencing blood loss. And you’re severely dehydrated. How are you even walking around?”

“I dunno, FRIDAY. Must be my rugged he-man constitution. Or whatever.” He was too tired to even banter with the notoriously sassy AI.

“I can contact Langone or Mt. Sinai Hospital; have you there in 20 minutes.”

“FRIDAY – I need to get to Pepper. _Now._ Can you work on contacting her by any means you have? Phone, text, internet, email, anything.”

Lights flashed. “I see. I still must recommend the hospital. But yes, boss, of course. Secure channels only, yes?”

“Yes. Probability of her being at the condo, given what’s going on in the world right now?”

More flashing.

“A 50 percent probability, boss. Perhaps…less. No answer yet via any channels.”

Tony felt the darkness closing in on him again. He resolutely pushed it aside, took a shaky breath, gripping the yoke on its steering column. “Let’s roll, then.”  
He thought a moment. “Listen, FRIDAY, if I happen to…pass out or anything, while we’re flying…this is Nebula. You can give the con to her.”

He could almost feel FRIDAY’s dubiousness at the whole situation, and he didn’t blame her.

“Hello, Nebula. Yes, boss, sure.”

A beat.

“Boss, there’s water in the side console. Drink some.”

Tony opened the console, took out a water bottle, opened and swigged it.

_Have to keep going._

He felt the little jet shudder quietly to life, and then the familiar stomach-sinking lift as it rose quickly into the air, pivoting and pointing its needle nose toward Manhattan.

Beside him in the co-pilot seat, Nebula watched him quietly, face hidden inside her dark blue hood.

*** (more to come soon!)


End file.
